


Panch Kanya

by toujours_nigel



Category: Ibis Trilogy - Ghosh
Genre: Christian Character, Dark Agenda Challenge, Desi Character, Female Character of Color, Gen, Hindu Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-24
Updated: 2009-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-05 03:47:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/37483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five Things of a sort: five women from the Sea of Poppies. (Yuletide Treat)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Panch Kanya

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dhobi ki Kutti (dhobikikutti)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dhobikikutti/gifts).



**Taramony**

 

It isn’t as though she hasn’t noticed him stealing glances at her from beneath lowered lashes. She isn’t blind, after all. But she hasn’t spoken of it, either—no need to burden her husband unnecessarily, he’s just a little boy, and all boys look. (She isn’t sure whether he would believe her, or blame her.) And she’s safe, besides, in her husband’s home.

 

And then she isn’t, and his glances grow in length and boldness, and she, through her _sari_, finds herself meeting his eyes too often. He blushes when she looks at him, and drops his eyes. (He has beautiful eyes.)

 

She is nineteen, that year, and the white of her widow’s weeds is the white of her heart given over to her Kanai. She’s held him close against her husband’s fumbling efforts. (She isn’t surprised he’s had no sons.) She needs no other man, and certainly not this boy who looks as though he might try and play Kanai to her Radhika.

 

When he offers himself up as her Radha, instead, her lord smiles in her heart and leads her to freedom. He looks more a Radha than she, little Naba Krishna, all lowered eyes and utter surrender.

****

 

**Elokeshi**

 

Baboo Nob Kissin (his own tongue isn’t good enough for him) comes to her in disguise, late in the night when only the eldest of her _kanchanis_ are successfully rubbing sleep from their eyes. (He’s just respectable enough that to be seen coming to her would tarnish him, though she knows him in more than passing.)

 

“_Ki hoyechhe_,” she asks, when he will not sit, or partake of refreshments, nor even speak. “Gomusta-babu, what is it?”

 

“Raja Neel Ratan Halder has been cheating Mr. Burnham,” he tells her, as though it is portentous news.

 

“_O ma, tai naki_?” She puts one hand to her mouth, eyes wide, not trying to hiding the twitch of a smile. (He’s the one who told her about Neel’s finances.)

 

“You should not hide his secrets, and hide him from justice.”

 

“_Ki aar kori, bolun._” I’m caught, gomusta-babu, I’m helpless. “Who will believe me, did I reveal all.”

 

“Justice is for all,” he says. “Raja Neel Ratan is not immune.”

 

“But he’s taken care of me,” she pleads. (Now we come to the crux of it.)

 

“Only good happens to those who do good.”

 

“Joye Maa Taramony,” she says, watches him flinch.

 

“Joye Maa Taramony.”

 

****

 

**Aditi**

 

Aditty Colver, wife of Maddow Colver, Chamar from Ghazipur. They’ve named her that, the sleep-ridden Englishman and the harried Bengali.

 

She repeats it under her breath and in her mind, to fix it in her mind. Impossible that she should not know it, it is her name and life, how can she not know it? She is Aditty Colver, wife of Maddow Colver, Chamar from Ghazipur.

 

Aditi is the mother of gods, the mother of Aditya, the sun, the mother of Vishnu in his Vamanavatar, the favoured wife, the better sister. Nobody has ever called her Aditi, save the priest in naming her. They changed her name to its opposite, called her Deeti, mother of demons, and wondered why she brought ill-fortune upon herself, light-eyed witch.

 

Deeti was married to an _afeemkhor_ and raped by her brother-in-law, and worked in the poppy-fields, and saw her husband die in an opium-factory, and died herself on his pyre, an unwilling sati. It is nothing to her, that life and the tears she shed for it, save in a distant way, like Heeru’s sorrows, or Munia’s.

 

That Deeti had a daughter, and she has none, is a sorrow she trains herself out of.

 

****

 

**Malati**

 

Parimal watches her give away her jewellery, and she knows (because she refuses to cover her face, she has no _lajja_ left to preserve) that he looks as disapproving as any of the old biddies cackling at her shameless behaviour. He doesn’t, at least, have their grasping avarice, (they’ve stopped hesitating when she hands them a _haar_, _churi_, _kanpasha_, _payal_, _tikli_, _tayra_, now they just grab, widows and virgins, with expressions of piety) and simply frowns when she offers him a necklace heavy with pearls, and tips his head at her before walking away.

 

She leaves the courtyard and follows him down the corridors (how silent they are, without Neel, with the women doing nothing but wail, and more rooms being closed up every day) to his quarters, without thinking how it must look. Parimal is family, and better than most of the hags housed in the _antarmahal_.

 

“_Kichhu bolben?_” she ventures, after a long minute where he looks at the floor before her feet.

 

“_Apni kothae jaben?_”

 

It isn’t a question she can answer, save in the negative. (Not staying here, not going back to my brothers.) “_Jani na_,” she says, in simple truth, and “What does it matter?”

 

****

 

**Putli**

 

“Admit it,” she crows, “I’m better at this.”

 

“You got lucky,” he says, reaches up to pull at her ankle.

 

She kicks hard at him, and goes up a little more, best be safe, Jodu hates losing. “Why don’t you admit it? I’m better than you.”

 

“You’re not,” Jodu says, and catches her by the ankle and flings her viciously from the branches down, to the river stretching blue and turbulent below, and keeps climbing up, not a look spared for her, falling to a watery death.

 

The trunk turns smooth and straight and the branches disappear as she tries to catch hold of them and up above are cross-trees which Jodu reaches, top of the world, and looks smiling down at her, still falling, in an impossible drop, to the deck, and through it to the sea below, riddled with great beasts opening their gory maws.

 

She hits her head against the wood in falling and wakes, floundering against the waves and the oppressive dark, nothing of light, or sun, and the only sounds the fluting snores of the _girmityas_ and the low murmuring voices of the convicts beyond.

 

“I **am** better,’ she murmurs, quiet, as to wake no-one.


End file.
